Henry VI, Part 2 (1982, Jane Howell)

Description

Increasingly noticeable to the viewer who has the leisure to study the four different BBC plays (see also 186, 193 and 513) in the minor tetralogy is the way in which director Jane Howell handles them as though the actors were a part of a repertory company. The doubling of roles is so pervasive that there is insufficient space in this report to list all the different roles a single actor may play (thus a '+' must suffice to indicate an actor's performing more than one role). David Burke is both the Bishop of Winchester and Dick the Butcher; Arthur Cox, not only Sir John Falstofe but also Mayor of London and Papal Legate. And so it goes. Meanwhile actors with major roles in one production may be mere attendant lords or flunkies in another: witness Ron Cook as "Third Messenger" in 1H6 and as Richard Plantagenet, en route to becoming King Richard III, in 2H6; or, to go the other way, there is Peter Benson as King Henry VI in 2H6 reduced to a spectral monk in R3. It's fun for the audience to watch out for these marvelous transformations but also stimulating for the actors to work in such a context of give-and-take and cheerful professionalism